So, you buy a new ergonomic keyboard, you plug it in and it doesn't work. After carefully examining the manual and calling the help desk it turns out you should have installed a special software package on your computer, before connecting the keyboard. Ah, you were wondering what that nice cd-rom was doing in the box.
Apparently, at Microsoft's computer peripherals division they realized this was probably not the kind of out-of-the-box experience you want to offer your users. So, what the guys in Seattle came up with: they've put a warning label on the plug, which says '[!], install software first' . Without removing the label, you can't plug in your keyboard. Of course it would have been better if installing extra software would not have been required. Or if at least the sequence in which you installed the software and connected the keyboard did not matter. And of course it shouldn't be your goal to 'fix things in the manual', but this example does proof that you can enhance the out of the box experience of your product if you think about how to package it.

Thnx to Christelle for the tip and picture.

Ever wondered why there are no swearwords in the T9 predictive text input? Because the predictive text input committee is a bunch of tight-ass, out-of-touch-with-the-world desk-jockeys. Or at least, that's what I learned from this movie. Oh and another thing, why is it called T9? Because you can write Text using 9 buttons (see the link). That's almost too mundane for me; gone is the mystery...

Cylindrical coffee maker for Muji by London-based design firm Industrial Facility (source: neu black)

The Japanese no-nonsense brand Muji (or Mujirushi Ryohin in full, which roughly translates as no brand, just good product) will soon be opening stores in the US, according to an article in business week entitled 'Zen and the Art of Selling Minimalism'. As I indicated before, I'm fascinated by Muji, because a time when feature-, design-, or brand-driven marketing seems to be the most common, Muji goes in a complete opposite direction. Once you remove the price-tag, no branding elements whatsoever remain, and the products are rather down to earth objects. They're not trying to distinguish themselves on features, most products just offer the basics, though often wrapped up in a clever design. It will be interesting whether the Muji proposition survives in America's marketplace.

Be sure to also check out this slideshow about Muji at the business week website.

At the CES this year, Motorola introduced the Rokr E8, which features a novel type of user interface. The front of the phone is fully covered by a glass panel, behind which there are two displays. One serves as a conventional screen, and the other one lies beneath the lower, touch-sensitive surface of the phone. Thus the text labels and icons of the touch-sensitive surface - which has tactile orientation points on them - can be changed. If you put the phone into music player mode, the keypad disappears, and you see the icons for controlling the music player. Effectively, Motorola has made a product on which they can change the button labels on a whim; a phone with just soft keys, but without the downside of soft keys (see also phonescoop definition) that the text labels are on the screen and not on the button itself.

Click the movie below to see the Rokr E8 in action.

Though not as extensively as in the Rokr, the SonyEricsson W850 walkman phone also has a UI that changes appearance if you switch to another 'mode' of use: if you switch to walkman mode, certain keys on the front panel are lit. Also the Philips HDD6330 GoGear mp3 player featured a sort of adaptable or 'feed forward' user interface. This device has icons in the touchpad that could be lit to indicate that the function was available. So if the 'play' button was not available, it was not lit.

These two products differ from the Rokr E8 in the sense that the E8 is even more flexible in what icons to present. A step further down the line from the Rokr we find the smart phones that are fully covered with a touch screen, such as the iPhone. However, the Rokr, with its tactile elements (little knobs) and a separation between the control and display area seems an interesting new addition to the spectrum.

(Via: Small Surfaces)

The programs of political parties are extensive, and the number of speeches that candidates give is enormous. As a consequence it's hard to keep track of which candidate's program is best reflecting your personal ideas. This is the reason that a number of years ago in the Netherlands, the website stemwijzer (vote-wiser/pointer, pun intended I guess...) was started. By answering a number of position statements, you could determine the party that best reflected your ideas.
The idea has been refined and copied by several institutes, and now there is also an electoral compass for the US presidential elections, initiated by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and the Wall Street Journal. In it's first month it attracted over a million visitors, and I'm guessing those are not solely from The Netherlands.
In terms of usability, the system allows you to effectively and efficiently determine your position in the political landscape. Although, it should be said none of the position statements is about whether you 'like the guy'. Or girl. So I guess they left out the satisfaction component of the usability definition.

PS just discovered that stemwijzer also developed a US version: votematch USA.

(Percentage 'no fault found' in modern high-volume consumer electronics, from Brombacher et Al. (2005))

Up until the mid nineties quality managers in consumer electronics were doing great. Product quality was increasing, and - as a consequence - complaints were dropping. And then something weird started to happen: complaints as well as product returns were going up again. What was going on here? An investigation of the returned products revealed that the products were fully functional. To be able to reveal the source of  problems, customer support and repair centers have detailed categorization schemes to indicate where in the product the source of the problem lies. However, if a consumer returns the product for any other reason it is filed under one category: 'no technical fault detected'. Which technically speaking is true, but it really doesn't help you the clean up the mess.

The reasons for product returns?
A while ago, Elke den Ouden got a PhD on this subject, with a thesis called 'Development of a Design Analysis Model for Consumer Complaints', which caused quite a stir in the press [1, 2]. She investigated this 'no fault found' category, which are also called 'soft problems'; technically there is nothing wrong with the product, but still consumer complain, return the product or think the product is broken. Den Ouden pointed out that there might be several reasons for these soft problems, among which:

• People might expect the product to do more than it really does. I once heard of a consumer returning an mp3 player to the store because 'there was no music on it'. The sales person had a pretty hard time explaining to the (somewhat elderly) customer that he needed a computer to put music on the device.
• Consumer are less tolerant to products they don't like and return them to the store. Some retail chains, for example in the US, have a no-questions-asked return policy. Which allows you to return any product within a given timeframe. Poor usability might be one of the dissatisfiers, but you can imagine a whole range of reasons.
• Finally, some people return the product because they simply can't figure it out, or actually think it is broken because they are not operating it as intended.

Unfortunately, in a lot of the press coverage of Den Ouden's research, only the last of three options was named, such as in this article in Appliance Magazine:

A recent study by Elke den Ouden of Philips Electronics found that at least half of returned products actually had nothing wrong with them—consumers simply couldn’t figure out how to properly use them.

This might have been due to a Reuters piece on the subject, which had the headline 'Complexity causes 50% of product returns'. Which is technically true, but people seemed to interpret that as 'Poor usability causes 50% of product returns'. Talking about soft problems... For the distribution of soft problems that Den Ouden found, take a look at this paper (pdf).

softreliability.org
In her research, Den Ouden could not point out the distribution of causes of soft problems. At the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) in The Netherlands, there is now a research project in progress called Soft Reliability, to explore the categories of soft problems and the factors in product development process that lead to them. I would recommend the publications section, where you'll find PDFs of a number of articles on the subject.

A new ally for usability specialists
So, quality engineers are running into the human factor. They are entering the field of usability, user satisfaction because practice is pointing them that way, whereas most usability specialist started out from what may best be called a 'belief system'. Maybe interaction designer, and usability and usability engineers have found a new ally. It's just a matter of time before we get the first Design for Six Sigma Usability tools.

See Also:
> Accenture Analyses Product Returns, But Fails to Explain How
> Product Complexity Causes Product Returns

The law of similarity (illustration: wikipedia)

Measuring usability, identifying usage problems, making improvements. All very interesting, but it's a 'correctional' activity at best. The true improvements in usability are made in the design phase. But how do you design a usable interface?

An important element of designing the UI is designing the lay-out of the controls. One of the design strategies for doing this is the Gestalt principle. The central notion behind Gestalt theory is the idea (or assumption, as some would have it) that we tend to order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetric, and simple. Simply put: we are looking for patterns. This is reflected in a number of laws that should help in assuring a UI layout in which controls or function that 'belong together' (i.e., perform similar functions) are perceived as a group by the user.

• Law of Closure — The mind may experience elements it does not perceive through sensation, in order to complete a regular figure (i.e., to increase regularity).
• Law of Similarity — The mind groups similar elements into collective entities or totalities. This similarity might depend on relationships of form, color, size, or brightness.
• Law of Proximity — Spatial or temporal proximity of elements may induce the mind to perceive a collective or totality.
• Law of Symmetry — Symmetrical images are perceived collectively, even in spite of distance.
• Law of Continuity — The mind continues visual, auditory, and kinetic patterns.
• Law of Common Fate — Elements with the same moving direction are perceived as a collective or unit.

Read more:
Gestalt Psychology (wikipedia)
Gestalt Principles of Form Perception (interaction-design.org)
John Maeda playing with Gestalt (Maeda's laws of simplicity blog)

(photo: business week)

From designer to marketing manager, if you're involved in product development you've probably been in one of those meetings where people are saying that 'our products should be more like Apple's'. Some even have the ambition to 'make an iPod-killer'. That seems like a laudable attitude, as Apple is setting the bar for the quality of user-product interaction. And it's doing pretty good financially as well. However, if you want to make a product like the iPhone, according this incredible background story in Wired Magazine, you should be willing to invest the following:

• roughly 150 million dollars;
• your top 100 engineers;
• 5 years of (top secret) development time.

And, personally I would like to add to that, that you might also want to consider whether you:

• have an almost religious user group;
• have control over the whole product system (including services, hardware, software etc.);

To name just a few things. You might want to bring up stuff like this, the next time someone proposes to make an iPhone-killer or 'be more like Apple' and is willing to put a dedicated team on it of - wait, here it comes - four people, and give them - yes - four months.

Vacuum cleaner giant Hoover has found that 49 percent of Dutch people have physical complaints while using their vacuum-cleaner. So, Hoover launches the FreeMotion, a vacuumcleaner that prevents wrist and back pains. The FreeMotion has a 'specially designed handle', that allows the user to set the height of the wand, operate the on/off switch, and select the 'appropriate program' for the floor you are vacuuming.
To be honest, the whole design probably was not sparked by the complaints of the Dutch; that little study is more likely to have been a part of the marketing effort of the Dutch Hoover division, who's website prominently features the new model. but interestingly, I can't seem to find the FreeMotion on Hoover.com. Can I conclude from that that Americans are not interested in ergonomics?

First-hand, hight resolution user research
A good (usable) design starts with taking a good look at how people use a product. When talking about field studies, all too often it is seen as just a means to define the product in terms of functionality. Market Intelligence goes out and observe people to see what products they might need or want. But field studies are also the natural starting point for designing a user-centered product. Designers should get first hand, high-resolution (including those seemingly meaningless details) information about how people use their products.

Designers don't get out there
However, most designers or product managers I talk to don't get the chance to do this. "Listen mate, we hire you to design, not to walk around town." When she wanted to take a look in the shops to see how his products were positioned, and what competitors there were on the shelves, a former class mate of mine, who became a product manager at a big consumer electronics company was told that: "You can look in stores all you want over the weekend. Work takes place in the office."

The Sony Streetstyle Headphones
To illustrate what a keen eye for product use can lead to, let's look at the story of the first Sony Streetstyle Headphones, as documented in the book Digital Dreams, The Work of the Sony Design Center, by Paul Kunkel.

Kazuo Ichikawa began to focus on a newer, more casual style of headphone that would fit behind the neck rather than over the head or directly in the ear. [...] His inspiration came from the way people use conventional headphones in the street (allowing them to drop behind the neck), how people wear baseball caps (often with the visor pointing backwards), and the apparatus that folk-singer Bob Dylan used to support his harmonica while performing in concert.
"A critical issue when designing headphones is to make them fit properly," says Mr. Ichikawa. "Yet there is a huge difference from one person to another in the distance from one ear, over the top of the head to the other ear. When you factor in hair styles and the possibility of a cap or hat, you realize that the traditional headphone is no good."

Just tell me how you would get inspiration like that while sitting at your desk.

A list apart has an article on how to write user-interaction dialogues: Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo.

...software should “know” that we form habits. Software should know that after clicking “Okay” countless times in response to the question, we’ll probably click “Okay” this time too, even if we don’t mean to. Software should know that we won’t have a chance to think before accidentally throwing our work away.

In several health centers in the Netherlands a device that's normally used at home to measure the glucose levels of diabetes patients, was used on up to 600 patients, without changing needles. The device contains six needles, and ordinarily, after each time its used, the head of the device is twisted, and a new, sterile needle comes out. Apparently, the staff of the health centers did not know they had to twist the head of the device. Although this brings up the question: why is it possible to use the device twice without bringing a new needle out? Maybe because for home use the needles don't have to be exchanged after each measurement.
In this case, using a home-use device in a professional context created a situation of poor usability, which led to over 600 people that have to be tested for hepatitis and HIV. "And it seemed like such a handy device," one of the doctors remarked.
A picture that accompanies an article in De Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper) seems to indicate that the device in question is the Roche Accucheck Softclix or Multiclix. Ironically, the devices are advertised as 'hygenic' and 'easy to use'. But to be fair, the website also indicates that the device is intended for 'patient self-testing'.

Source: Volkskrant (in Dutch only)